Proceedings of Eighth Annual Meeting 65 



Comptroller, who will collect three-fourths from the town or local 

 organization raising the funds. This system might be satisfactory 

 if the people in all mosquito-infested towns were equally interested 

 in getting rid of mosquitoes, but such is not the case. Consequently 

 we have certain communities and towns which have taken advantage 

 of the state aid, raised funds and have ditched their salt-marshes. 

 Perhaps adjoining towns have taken no action, consequently the 

 work which has been done is more or less sporadic and spotted, 

 because it is necessary to depend upon local initiative. 



As an example, all towns from the New York State line as far 

 as Westport have ditched their salt marsh areas, and the same is 

 true of Fairfield, adjoining Westport on the East. Westport has 

 taken no action^ yet it breeds mosquitoes, not only for home use but 

 supplies a goodly number to the adjacent towns, which have done 

 and are doing all they can to eliminate the pest from their own terri- 

 tory. Likewise the salt-marshes of Orange, New Haven, a large 

 part of East Haven and Branford as well as Guilford and Madison 

 have been ditched, but there is a small section lying between 

 Momauguin and Branford River and a large portion of the Quinni- 

 piac Marsh in North Haven still unditched and the towns raising 

 the funds for this work do not and cannot obtain the maximum 

 benefit from their efforts and their expenditures, until this adjacent 

 breeding territory is cleaned up. 



Believing it to be a statewide matter, a large number of interested 

 and influential men formed an organization, and attempted to obtain 

 the necessary legislation to permit the state, through the Director 

 of the Agricultural Experiment Station, to initiate work wherever 

 it needs to be done, and asked for an appropriation sufficient to 

 ditch within the next two years, all the remaining unditched salt- 

 marshes in the state, and some of the worst fresh water swamps. 

 On account of the present financial condition of the state, every 

 efifort is being made to cut down appropriations and to devise new 

 tax measures to avoid a heavy deficit. Consequently the time is not 

 opportune to obtain large appropriations for anti-mosquito work. In 

 spite of this, it at first seemed probably that the new legislation 

 would pass, perhaps with a small appropriation, which would enable 

 the director to connect up the areas already ditched. A hearing 

 was held on February 16, before the Committee on Public Health 

 and Safety, to which this bill had been referred; a good case was 

 presented and no opposition was recorded. At that time and on 

 several occasions thereafter, members of the committee stated that 



